Awards Online
March 4 – 10, 2016, 12-5pm
Liberty Party: Tuesday March 8, 2016, 6-10pm
**** In Celebration of International Women’s Day****
The Liberty Party will feature a musical performance by Australian Showgirl, Anna Copa Cabanna and burlesque by Toronto’s own Red Zeppelin.
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March 8, 2016 - 6-10pm,
Jennifer Lorraine Fraser invites you to the Liberty Party for Awards - Her MFA Thesis Exhibition -
Artist Talks: 6:30
Rene Vandenbrink: "Running Away From The Everyday."
Jamey Braden: "unfortunate resonance"
Britta Fluevog: “Molding into a moral citizen through the act of making textiles”
Performance: 8
Burlesque: Red Zeppelin
Music: Anna Copa Cabanna
Curatorial Tour: Wednesday March 9, 2016 1-2pm
OCAD U Grad Gallery 205 Richmond Street
http://jenniferlorrainefraser.weebly.com/
Note: Gentlemen please come accompanied by a woman
Research Description:
Abstract
“Awards: Acknowledging Toronto’s Incarcerated Women – 1919-1940”
Master of Fine Arts, 2016
Jennifer Lorraine Fraser
Criticism and Curatorial Practice
OCAD University
This curatorial project reconceptualises the lives of women in Toronto incarcerated under the Female Refuges Act (FRA). Creating a space for women, my project offers in depth research into the period following the revision of the FRA (1919-1940), outlining the systemic oppression young women faced when they were asylumed against their wills, and how they were disciplined for reasons such as feeblemindedness, deviance and incorrigibility. Historical information of their incarceration is difficult to attain, lacking or non-existent. However, former inmate Velma Demerson documents her confinement in the 2002 publication Incorrigible. By utilizing the subsequent research that arose from Demerson’s personal narrative of incarceration: newspaper articles, interviews and a PHD Thesis, 2004, highlights the lack of supporting documentation of the exploitation and innocence of other young women.
My exhibition, Awards, incorporates archival reproductions, acknowledgment of forced labor within asylums, and known lifestyle choices of incarcerated women; along with contemporary artistic practice used to raise questions about societal expectations of women and of their disciplining. Eight artists, respond to the research I have conducted: Ana Čop, Anna Copa Cabanna, Britta Fluevlog, Gillian Dykeman, Jamey Braden, Kristina Guison, Paddy Jane, and Rene Vandenbrink. Resulting in a co-construction of research, contemplation and response to the history of women being unethically incarcerated.
The archival materials chosen for Awards, consist of photographs held by the Archives of Toronto, ephemera found in the archives for the CNE, old theses, and old newspaper clippings. I will be creating a reading space for visitors to the exhibition with research materials, including books: Incorrigible written by Velma Demerson, The Ward published by Coach House Press, Carolyn Strange’s Toronto’s Girl Problem, and Jane Nicholas’ The Modern Girl; both published by The University of Toronto Press. Doing so to encourage the audience to make their own narrative spaces within the exhibition - to spend time in the space - and to see the purposely positioned threads of an anti-narrative/narrative between the absent feminist archive and the contemporary works. Within my research, there is only one personal story told in full, and yet women were incarcerated under the FRA for well over fifty-plus years; where are those stories? As a curator, I cannot claim to know these absent stories, and if I did so it would be further destructive to the people of whom those stories exist. It is only through snapshots of historical knowledge that we can begin to formulate a space for women within the numerous authoritative structures that regulated their bodies. That is the purpose of Awards.
My Thesis exhibition, Awards, will be held in Toronto, March 4-10, and is a co-construction of research, contemplation and response to the history of women being falsely incarcerated due to deviance, or incorrigibility. Included, are 8 artists at numerous levels in their careers, from undergraduate students to those working in a professional capacity as performers. All of which have been commissioned to respond to the research I have conducted.
The exhibition falls on International Women's Day, for more information join the Facebook event page.
Thank you to The Darling Mansion for hosting Anna Copa Cabanna!
When in Toronto stay with them!!
Abstract
“Awards: Acknowledging Toronto’s Incarcerated Women – 1919-1940”
Master of Fine Arts, 2016
Jennifer Lorraine Fraser
Criticism and Curatorial Practice
OCAD University
This curatorial project reconceptualises the lives of women in Toronto incarcerated under the Female Refuges Act (FRA). Creating a space for women, my project offers in depth research into the period following the revision of the FRA (1919-1940), outlining the systemic oppression young women faced when they were asylumed against their wills, and how they were disciplined for reasons such as feeblemindedness, deviance and incorrigibility. Historical information of their incarceration is difficult to attain, lacking or non-existent. However, former inmate Velma Demerson documents her confinement in the 2002 publication Incorrigible. By utilizing the subsequent research that arose from Demerson’s personal narrative of incarceration: newspaper articles, interviews and a PHD Thesis, 2004, highlights the lack of supporting documentation of the exploitation and innocence of other young women.
My exhibition, Awards, incorporates archival reproductions, acknowledgment of forced labor within asylums, and known lifestyle choices of incarcerated women; along with contemporary artistic practice used to raise questions about societal expectations of women and of their disciplining. Eight artists, respond to the research I have conducted: Ana Čop, Anna Copa Cabanna, Britta Fluevlog, Gillian Dykeman, Jamey Braden, Kristina Guison, Paddy Jane, and Rene Vandenbrink. Resulting in a co-construction of research, contemplation and response to the history of women being unethically incarcerated.
The archival materials chosen for Awards, consist of photographs held by the Archives of Toronto, ephemera found in the archives for the CNE, old theses, and old newspaper clippings. I will be creating a reading space for visitors to the exhibition with research materials, including books: Incorrigible written by Velma Demerson, The Ward published by Coach House Press, Carolyn Strange’s Toronto’s Girl Problem, and Jane Nicholas’ The Modern Girl; both published by The University of Toronto Press. Doing so to encourage the audience to make their own narrative spaces within the exhibition - to spend time in the space - and to see the purposely positioned threads of an anti-narrative/narrative between the absent feminist archive and the contemporary works. Within my research, there is only one personal story told in full, and yet women were incarcerated under the FRA for well over fifty-plus years; where are those stories? As a curator, I cannot claim to know these absent stories, and if I did so it would be further destructive to the people of whom those stories exist. It is only through snapshots of historical knowledge that we can begin to formulate a space for women within the numerous authoritative structures that regulated their bodies. That is the purpose of Awards.
My Thesis exhibition, Awards, will be held in Toronto, March 4-10, and is a co-construction of research, contemplation and response to the history of women being falsely incarcerated due to deviance, or incorrigibility. Included, are 8 artists at numerous levels in their careers, from undergraduate students to those working in a professional capacity as performers. All of which have been commissioned to respond to the research I have conducted.
The exhibition falls on International Women's Day, for more information join the Facebook event page.
Thank you to The Darling Mansion for hosting Anna Copa Cabanna!
When in Toronto stay with them!!